Chelsea’s Midfield Enforcer Being Targeted By Barcelona As A Plan B For Verratti

Chelsea Transfer News

Chelsea superstar Nemanja Matic is reportedly being targeted by Catalan giants Barcelona as an alternative for PSG’s Marco Verratti, should the La Liga club fail to get the Italian.

Matic has been one of the finest players for Chelsea over the years and he has established himself as one of the best deep-lying midfielders around. The Serbian midfield enforcer is indispensable from the Chelsea set-up as he has found his partner for life in N’Golo Kante, with both the players complementing each other’s abilities.

The level of understanding exhibited by the midfielders has been tremendous and it will surely take Barcelona a fortune to convince Chelsea to break the great midfield partnership and make money out of it.

However, Barcelona’s primary midfield target is not Nemanja Matic, but Marco Verratti. It has been claimed by Mundo Deportivo (h/t Daily Star) that Matic would be a Barcelona target only if they fail in their pursuit of the PSG star man.

Verratti is one of the best central midfielders in the world and he is the heartbeat of the Paris Saint-Germain gameplay. Unai Emery would be extremely reluctant to let go of the player but if the Italian’s head gets turned by the Barcelona offer, then there would be very little for PSG to do about it. The prospect of playing for Barcelona would be a hard one to turn down.

However, with PSG really keen on achieving Champions League success, and the fact that they lost to Barcelona in a heart-breaking manner would make them think twice about selling Verratti to Barca. It would be fair for PSG to consider Barcelona as direct Champions League rivals and strengthening their rivals would be suicidal.

This would leave Barca with their alternate option, Nemanja Matic. Sergio Busquets has struggled this season and Andre Gomes has failed to live up to his potential as well. Now that Luis Enrique will not be in charge of Barca next season, there might be a string of changes at the club.

Chelsea, on the other hand, are no way inferior to Barcelona when it comes to Champions League and they would be really focused on performing well to try and win the ultimate European Trophy at all costs. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t even be surprising if Chelsea manage to add more players to their squad as they will be taking part in 4 competitions next season.

Rotation of squads would be important for the Blues and hence they wouldn’t be willing to part ways with one of their most important players in the squad.